Medical affairs and drug information practices within the pharmaceutical industry: Results of a benchmarking survey

Pharma or biotech companies that are looking to develop and implement a medical affairs department, or current directors who are looking for ways to assess the performance of their department, find a dearth of published information to assist them with their task. Although in the past a few individual drug and biotech companies have conducted benchmarking surveys in this area for their own in-house use, research reveals that the surveying company often cannot obtain the participation of its current and possible future competitors. This constraint dictates a small and/or nonrandomized participant pool, and means that, unfortunately, even these private, in-house, unpublished surveys can be inaccurate or misleading. In an attempt to make accessible published information and metrics about this area of the pharmaceutical industry a third party devised and conducted a medical affairs drug information benchmarking survey over a two-month period beginning in December of 1997. This article presents the findings of that survey, which included 24 major pharmaceutical and biotech companies. This information will provide directors and managers of medical affairs/drug information departments competitive matrices by which to gauge their performance and provide a set of standards to help guide their departmental decisions. The survey covers the areas of departmental scope and operations, and staffing workload and compensation.